Chapter 1

"There has to be an easier way of doing this,"
Susan Aisling complained. She tossed a strand of dark blond hair over her
shoulder and adjusted her glasses, then hastened to keep pace with her three
classmates. Further along the trail, David led Diane and Jason through the woods
to complete their group project. Twilight had begun to set in, and an icy wind
blew from the north.

Canadian air, Susan
thought to herself, and hugged her arms against her torso. Late autumn in
Darnell, Vermont meant days of overcast skies, skeletal trees, and dead brown
grass. There’re so many better things I
could be doing. There’s the script for the new play at the community theater,
or-

"Is the great queen of the stage afraid of the forest
at night?” Jason Calhoun taunted from up ahead. The broad-shouldered teenager
turned back to grin at her, and she could see his sharp cheekbones and chiseled
jaw in the dim light.

She recalled him and several of his football cronies throwing
rotten fruit at the stage in the middle of last year’s theater club production
of Richard III, before they ran off
chortling at their prank. Susan had received her first major role as Queen Margaret
in that play, hence the nickname.

Susan took the bait. "Oh, so I’m the one who’s
afraid? From what I’ve heard, you’re the
only football player in the school that refuses to shower with the team.” She
smirked. “So what are you afraid of,
Jason? That you’ll get a boner in front of all those guys or that they’ll laugh
at you for being so small?” Jason’s face purpled in the dim light.

"All right, cut it out you two,” Diane Shula interjected,
and Susan bit her lip to keep from firing a retort at her former best friend.
Diane shot her an exasperated look before turning back to Jason. He puffed out
his chest beneath the letterman jacket he wore, and Susan figured he must have
been showing off. Jason was known for his throwing arm, not his subtlety.

Susan turned to David Sanderson. “So what's so special
about these woods?" She asked him while noticing that Diane had slowed her
pace so she walked closer to Jason. Susan scowled and looked away. David
fumbled in his sweatshirt pocket for his flashlight, and then turned it on to
illuminate the rocky, overgrown path ahead of them.

"We have to visit a historic landmark and make a
poster for a class presentation, right?" David asked them.

"Yeah, that's what we're supposed to do. But I don't
think this is what Ms. Ghastly had in mind," Diane replied. Ms. Ghastly was
the long-standing nickname for Ms. Gasney, their pale, hollow-eyed history
teacher.

"Well, Ghastly likes to give extra credit for
creativity and initiative,” David answered from up ahead. “I've got a landmark
that no one else will be able to find, or would even think to use." David
turned the corner of his mouth up in a grin that Susan could barely see in the
fading light. "How many of you have heard the legend of Joel
Callahan?"

Susan realized that although she had seen David almost
every day in school, she knew little about him. David's companions were his
classmates, not his friends. They wouldn’t be with him now if it weren't for
the group project he had volunteered to lead. He kept to himself, and Susan had
seldom seen him in town during summers. During the school year he walked home
as soon as the bell rang, traipsing in solitude amidst the forest through which
he now guided them.

The others watched him bend his tall, thin frame through
the twisted silhouettes that comprised the forest at dusk. David pushed back a
strand of straight brown hair and aimed his flashlight down the trail. He made
brief eye contact with Susan, and then turned back to the path.

David remained quiet, waiting for an answer to his question
about Joel Callahan. Susan noticed that Diane and even Jason seemed a little
intimidated by him, and she felt disconcerted as well. This was David’s
element, and while he might have appeared withdrawn at school he possessed an
aura of confidence here.

"I've heard a little about him. Didn't he go insane or
something?" Susan asked into the silence.

"Or something," David answered with a secretive
smile. "At the center of these woods lies a bridge that predates all of
the colonial settlers. The natives in the area shunned the bridge and refused
to drink from the river that flowed beneath it. The settlers found the
structure and thought of it as more of an oddity than any kind of threat. It’s
made of a wood unlike anything anyone has ever seen, black and hard as stone,
almost as if it were petrified. Once people started vanishing, the settlers
began to wonder about it. That’s where Callahan came in.”

"People vanished?" Diane asked with an anxious
expression, and Jason found his excuse to put his arm around her.

"Tell us more about this bridge we're searching
for." Susan addressed David, ignoring the other two.

"We're not searching, I cross it every day on my way
home from school. But I didn’t learn about its dark and tragic history until a
couple of weeks ago. People regard it as more of a myth now, but it’s all in
the town records and old archived issues of the Darnell Harbinger. Some of the story remains unconfirmed, but there’re
enough historical facts to satisfy Ghastly."

“Come on, out with the story already,” Susan commanded with
a roll of her eyes, but she couldn’t hide her curiosity. Diane was trying to
feign disinterest but kept shooting glances at David’s back. Even Jason now
looked at him with a mixture of fascination and contempt, although Susan
figured he had just come along for the chance to hit on Diane. Why else would
an ignorant jock like him care about an urban legend? Susan shook her head in
disdain.

"The original settlers of Darnell ignored the
superstitions of the Native Americans and built the town near the forest and
close to the bridge,” David began. “For a while the new town prospered. The
first issues of the Darnell Harbinger
emerged from the town’s new printing press, along with other businesses. But
then an old man who lived on the edge of the forest disappeared. A week after,
his body washed up on the banks of the river. It was well preserved, except
that the man's face was gone. From chin to forehead, not even the bone beneath
the face endured, and no brain tissue remained inside his skull.” He paused,
and the group held their breath.

“A few months later the barber's wife disappeared, but the
villagers whispered that she had run off with another man. The barber had been
known to be violent when drunk, which was pretty much every night.” David
stopped and directed his flashlight at the path ahead before continuing in a
low voice.

“At around this time several people reported that they felt
like an ominous force watched them from above, and no matter how long they
stared into the sky they couldn’t find the source. Talk of demons and monsters
glimpsed in the woods began to circulate within the town.” He paused to
navigate a treacherous branch-strewn segment of the path, and then resumed.

"Two weeks later a farmer went missing, and for that
nobody could come up with an explanation. He had a wife and three children, and
was well liked throughout the town. His family said he left one night and never
returned.” David stopped and turned to look back at them. “The villagers found
a hat he had often worn around Darnell snagged on a tree branch near the
bridge.” He began walking again.

“Then an entire family of four disappeared in the middle of
the night. Indistinct tracks led from the house into the forest, but did not
lead back out.” David paused to draw breath.

“After the family
vanished, the townsfolk began to speak of witches. Soon accusations began to
fly,” David continued, glancing back to gauge his audience’s reaction. He met
Susan’s gaze, and an unreadable expression passed across his face. He turned
back to scout the path.

"A woodcutter named Joel Callahan led a group of men
with weapons and lanterns into the forest, hoping to solve the mystery of the
bridge and lay the villagers’ suspicions about witchcraft to rest. By the
reports available today on Callahan, he stood at about six and a half feet tall
and could lift even large logs by himself. The burgeoning town often looked to
him as a leader.”

“Because brawn and muscles are great leadership qualities,
not, you know, intelligence.” Susan interjected with a glance at Jason.

“Hey, it’s not a bad way of doing things,” Jason replied
with a grin. He flexed his arm, and Susan saw Diane give him an admiring look.
She frowned and turned away.

“Well, I suppose it’s debatable whether Callahan should
have been the de facto mayor of the town,” David replied. “But at the time the
people needed someone like him, I think. He led the expedition to the bridge,
and they found it in the center of a silent clearing. No insects, no birds, not
even the water made a sound, a survivor of the expedition would later report.”
David glanced ahead, and Susan thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty pass
across his face.

"At the bridge, Callahan raised his axe and swung it
into the strange black wood, hoping its destruction might evoke whatever
menaced the town,” David resumed. “The blade sunk into the rail, and then
stuck. The woodcutter heaved on the handle, but it wouldn't budge. For a time each
of the men tried to remove the axe, but the bridge wouldn’t give it up.” David
looked back at them, the shadows of the forest caressing his lean face.

Diane huddled even closer to Jason, and Susan wondered why
she even agreed to join this group. She had thought Diane invited her because
she wanted to reconnect, but she had spent the entire time flirting with Jason
Calhoun, the school’s star quarterback. Susan remembered a time when Diane
couldn’t care less about football or guys with muscles, she thought as she watched
them out of the corner of her eye.

“At that point, they realized that one of their companions,
a horse merchant named Benjamin Cavanaugh, was no longer with them. Callahan
said that he thought Benjamin had gone back to the village, but the rest were
unsure.”

Jason stumbled over a fallen branch, interrupting the
story. David turned with his flashlight to help illuminate the path for his
classmates. He continued the tale as he walked backward. David must have walked through these woods so many times he knows the
path by heart, Susan thought to herself. Or maybe he knows this part of the forest better then the rest.
That thought disturbed her, and she tried to push it out of her mind.

“That was the last event anyone in Callahan’s group
remembered with clarity. Over the next few days the party returned, often
dehydrated, malnourished, and dazed. None of them seemed to understand that
several days had passed since they had departed. The only ones who didn't
return were Joel Callahan and Benjamin Cavanaugh.” David paused. "Look!
We're here."

The bridge stood before them in the pale glow of their flashlights.
Night had fallen, and the wood of the bridge appeared to glisten under the
illumination. Unlike the elegant covered bridges that Vermont was renowned for,
this bridge was open to the elements. Spindly, jagged posts held up the
crossbeams, but the surface looked sturdy enough.

The gray waters of the small, unnamed river flowed beneath
the dark underside. She shivered. This was what she needed to photograph and
then draw for their project. She took out her camera and began snapping several
pictures with her night lens. She snapped a couple shots of Diane and David,
but not Jason. Wouldn’t want to profane
the film, she thought with a sneer.

“I’m gonna go check it out up close, I’ll be back in a
bit.” Jason chimed in, and then scuttled down the bank before anyone could stop
him.

"Finish the tale," Susan urged. Diane looked
anxious, and Susan considered going over to comfort her. But if she liked Jason
so much then she could wait for him to come back, Susan decided.

"The men of the expedition returned, but days went by
with no sign of Callahan. The people of Darnell went about their business, but
murmurs of leaving and going elsewhere spread. Callahan's young wife, pregnant
with their child, wept each night while some of the village women consoled her
as best they could. Benjamin Cavanaugh was given up for dead.”

David paused and illuminated his face with his flashlight
in an effect that might have been cheesy in any other situation, but at that
moment it sent a chill down Susan’s spine.

“Two weeks from the day of the expedition, Callahan
returned to the village. Only his stature and the axe he carried gave a hint to
his identity. He must have recovered his weapon from the bridge at some point,
and he looked as if he had been wandering the forest for days.” David idly
shined his flashlight around the bridge, drawing emphasis to it. Despite whatever
social flaws David might have, he seemed to have a flair for oration. Susan
wondered if she could convince him to join the theater club after the group
project was finished.

"Callahan looked almost skeletal when he returned,
with flesh stretched tight where there had once been muscle and sinew. He
appeared as if he had aged thirty years, and his eyes were sunken and haunted.
He spoke one word, ‘Ialu’, and he repeated it many times each day. His clothes
hung from his sparse frame in tatters, and the doctor found small, half-healed
cuts all over his body. His hair had gone white as bone.” Diane looked around
for Jason as David continued speaking, but he hadn’t returned yet.

"He was brought to the village doctor, and his cuts
began to heal. But Callahan's mind remained broken. He still would not speak
beyond the one nonsensical word he knew, and his eyes retained their haunted
appearance. He returned to his wife, who did her best to make accommodations
for him.” David gazed at his audience, and both girls held their breath. David
smiled before resuming the legend. He ventured out onto the surface of the
bridge, and the two girls reluctantly followed.

“One night Callahan left along with his axe,” David
resumed. “He was never seen again, but the disappearances stopped and with them
the sensations of being watched from the sky. After a whole year went by
without any strange occurrences, the villagers decided that Joel Callahan had
saved them at the cost of his own life. They built a memorial in his honor, but
it was destroyed in the fire that-”

"Jason!" Diane interjected
in a panicked shriek. Susan looked away from David, snapped out of her trance
by Diane's panicked cry. "He’s been gone for over five minutes, he should
have been back by now! Jason!"

Susan was about to dismiss Diane’s panic as just another
plea for attention, but something in the other girl’s eyes unnerved Susan. She
had seen that look before, when Susan and Diane had been younger and far from
the rift that high school would bring. Susan was about to go over to her when the
three of them heard movement on the riverbank below, and Diane darted off the
bridge and scrambled down the slope.

"Diane, wait!" Susan called out, a heavy feeling
descending into her stomach. The girl shrieked at something they couldn’t see,
and the two remaining students exchanged glances. Diane’s screech fell flat in
the night, as if the air warped around the bridge so that no sound could escape.
Susan heard a scraping sound, and then Diane’s voice cut off with a yelp. David
and Susan looked at each other in shock.

"We have to go after her," Susan told him,
forcing courage into her voice. "Come on."

"We can't go down there!” David exclaimed. “Who knows
what might be-"

"You brought us here, the least you could do is help
them!" Susan hissed with a glare.

"I've been here hundreds of times, nothing like this
has ever happened!” David protested. "It was a legend. I was just trying
to scare you and Diane, Jason said-“

"I don't care what that muscle-bound moron said.
Although I guess we should try to find him too." She grabbed his thin arm
through his sweatshirt. "Come on, we're wasting time." She hauled David
off the bridge and down the embankment.

“Okay, I’m coming! I wasn’t going to let you go down there
alone, I just…never mind.” Susan released her grip on his arm, and he followed
her down to the river’s edge. The water lapped at the bottom of the bridge, but
nothing else moved. Susan noticed something sticking out of the wood and leaned
over to inspect it.

She gagged and grabbed David’s arm again, this time leaning
on him for support. She saw several scarlet gouges in the wood, and the remains
of one pink press-on fingernail. Diane must have been clinging to the bridge as
something jerked her down with hideous strength. Susan let go of David’s arm
and sank to her knees, crawling a few feet away to relinquish her lunch on the
freezing ground.

“What…the hell…” She panted between coughs.

“Susan, listen to me! Please, this wasn’t-”

David stopped talking as movement beneath the bridge caught
his attention. A shadow lunged at him, and the two figures struggled. The
anonymous figure kicked David in the back of his leg, forcing him down. David glanced
over at where Susan sat too shocked to intervene, and she saw the stark terror
in his eyes. Then the figure shoved him face-first into the river. David tried to
scream for help but something unseen pulled him beneath the water.

The shadow slid towards Susan, who raised her flashlight in
trembling hands to illuminate David’s assailant. Jason stood there, grinning at
her. He had removed his shirt and jacket, and on his torso Susan saw burn scars
in the shapes of bizarre symbols, as if he had been branded hundreds of times
by a lunatic cowherd. His hand shot out and gripped her by the hair, forcing
her towards the water with incredible strength. Her flashlight fell to the
ground and rolled, stopping just at the edge of the water. His eyes glinted
with an intelligence she had never seen before.

"You- you arranged this…"

"Yes. As a child I found a book beneath the false
bottom of a steamer trunk, a whispering book with covers of obsidian. It called
out to me, and I rescued it from its prison. It is a book with a name no human
tongue can speak, a tome brought to Earth from afar when our species still
festered in the primordial sludge. The book awakens the bellowing gate to Ialu.”
Susan managed a glance at Jason’s face, and his smile was icy in the light of
the fallen flashlight.

“So the whole dumb jock thing…” Susan coughed out.

Jason grinned in response. “Listen to the song of the gate,
Susan!” He roared into the air. Susan began to hear a low, hungry growl emanate
from the structure. It sounded different than any animal on Earth could
produce, savage and merciless.

“Joel Callahan got a few things wrong,” Jason continued in
a calmer tone as he held her in place a hair’s breath above the water. “That
family, the barber’s wife, the farmer…Joel came in the night and forced them to
the bridge. It took them all the same, but it didn’t count, their trust had to be betrayed.
One must reject the moralities of Earth in totality before one can be accepted
into the realms beyond the gate.” Susan heard him sigh with frustration.

“The men he brought with him into the forest all ran after
the bridge took Benjamin Cavanaugh,” Jason continued. “My ancestor only managed
to offer one true sacrifice while the Children of Ialu chased the others.”

“Callahan…Calhoun…” Susan’s eyes widened as she put the
pieces together. “Joel was your ancestor! All these years you’ve just been-”

Susan struggled, but his muscular arms were like chorded
steel. She craned her neck to look into his eyes, and saw a mixture of madness
tinged with hatred. She wondered if that book had done this to him, turning a
curious child into a fevered madman through years of imparting its hushed
council.

“David liked you, did you know that? It was my idea to use
the bridge for our project. I mentioned that if he told the legend with enough
panache it would impress a theater nerd like you, and that idiot practiced for
days.” He forced her closer to the surface of the water.

He gestured at his mutilated torso with one hand while he
held Susan down with the other. “When I reached adolescence I burned the sacred
sigils into my flesh, as the book instructed. My ancestor feared that his wife,
then his fiancé, would betray him as a witch if he completed that part,” Jason
recounted with a glower.

From this view the river seemed impossibly deep, as if it
went down for miles. She shouldn't have been able to see that far down, but a
source of pale yellow light shone from the bottom. The waters began to stir and
then froth. Something down there gave off an unearthly glow, and it began
rising towards her from the obscured bottom. As Jason pushed her further into
the water, she saw its true form. Her screams grew muffled as she lost her
balance and tumbled into the turbulent river. Seconds later, something ripped
her from the surface and pulled her below.

Jason didn’t glance at the water as Susan disappeared
beneath the waves. He threw back his head and gazed with fervor at the stars,
which grew brighter and began to pulse. For just a moment, he felt something
looking back at him across the vast expanse of the night sky.

“Jaggi garthen iaki! Ithgen Caarn!” He began a lengthy
chant in a harsh, guttural language, and then finished by screaming out “Ialu!”
In his voice the word became an ululating shriek that echoed through the trees
and hovered over the bridge in a cloud of vicious sound.

Jason fell to his knees, and his head banged against the
gleaming wood of the bridge, the energy drawn from him. He felt his body pulled
towards the water by some unseen force. His last bit of willpower left him, and
he dropped into the water from the embankment.

The river, which had always been slow and lazy before, now
flowed faster than any mountain rapids. The water swept Jason beneath the
structure and held him suspended in a whirlpool. As he looked up at the
underside of the bridge, he saw distorted shapes moving about with large,
bulbous orange eyes. They didn’t blink, only gathered around to stare. Then the
vortex wrenched him down.

Darkness swallowed Jason, and the numbing embrace of the
river stilled his body. The water dropped away, and he found himself flying
through an unfathomable void. Dim stars faded into oblivion, and the emptiness
seemed infinite as it surrounded him. Jason hurtled towards a distant cluster
of clashing light and shadow at the edge of the abyss.

He found himself lying flat on his back in the center of a
field, staring up at a kaleidoscopic sky. The stars appeared too large and
bright, and they were the wrong constellations, shapes, and colors. Titanic worm-like
creatures with hundreds of gnashing mouths floated in the sky, trailing
clusters of pale tentacles. They wove their way between dark, pulsating orbs
that drifted among strands of strange yellow clouds.

Something that he could not see stared down at him from the
crazed horizon. He could feel it, the same presence that had watched him in the
forest, a being whose gaze could span the cosmos. The whispering book had
alluded to a creature known as the Gatekeeper, which manifested when one opened
the portal without making the requisite sacrifices. He glanced upwards and
shuddered. His ancestor must have seen that entity, and it had destroyed him.

Jason was naked, cold, and he felt heavier than he had on
Earth. He couldn’t breathe, but he found that air wasn’t necessary here. His
heart didn’t beat, yet he remained conscious and aware. The world around him
roiled with hideous sights and sounds that unsettled his senses and wracked his
body.

He pushed himself to his feet with considerable effort. The
grass felt wrong; the texture was strange and unpleasant on his bare flesh. He
was heavier than he had been on Earth, and his neck began to ache as he gazed
around. A large, flat building stood in the distance, surrounded by peculiar
colored lights.

The Gatekeeper hovered above him but remained invisible in
the sky. Jason shivered beneath its immense, inscrutable gaze.

"I was supposed to be rewarded with the secret
knowledge of the stars! I sang the chants, made the sacrifices, and opened the
gate! It was written…" Jason trailed off. His words fell around him,
dropping like stones as if they possessed a physical weight.

Across the field, a group of figures approached, cloaked in
darkness. As they approached, Jason saw that they wore masks of human faces.
The eye sockets in all of the faces were empty and dark. They stood taller than
any person, and skeletally thin. Bizarre mutters filled the air as the figures
conversed over his head. They did not speak English, or any language heard on
Earth, but Jason understood them nonetheless.

"Beyond the stars, a hidden path, devotion sung anew…

“Three betrayed, passage paid, across the bridge to Ialu…”

“And eager we are, for the pleasures…”

“Callow conjurer, heedless sorcerer…”

"Insatiable lust, unrivaled zeal…"

“Shrouded wisdom, seething heart…”

"Abyss-Gazer, All-Watcher, Gatekeeper at the Threshold..."

The whispers shot back and forth, faster and fiercer, the
words losing meaning as the forms hissed with increasing ardor. The figures
spun around him, a whirl of dead faces and twisted shapes. One of them wore
Diane’s face, and another displayed half of David’s face. A miasma of raging colors
comprised the other half.

They transformed while they moved, becoming less and less
recognizable as they spun. They twisted and turned in ways that defied biology
and geometry alike. Strange appendages with talons lashed out, striking each of
the symbols Jason had burned into his flesh. Knowledge began to fill his mind,
and his blood flowed into the fallow plain of Ialu.

The alien stars burned, and the entity above shifted and
began to reveal itself. “No! I made the sacrifices! Why?” Jason whispered in a
desperate voice. As the Gatekeeper showed itself in full he found the air in
his lungs to scream, a shrill sound that pierced the thick atmosphere. The
figures paused in their mad dance.

They turned to the sky and echoed Jason's scream, but for
them it was not a sound of terror, it was a sound of exultation and worship.
Jason continued to bawl after the air in his lungs expired, his voice echoing
through the vile field beyond the material clutches of time and space.

Long after the figures had departed, long after Jason's body
should have given out to hunger, thirst, or old age, his bawls continued and on
through the unending night. His shrieks twisted and built upon each other,
taking form and reverberating back and forth across the land in a frenzied dance
of their own.

When Jason’s cries faded to whimpers, his body and
consciousness disintegrated and flew back across the abyss. This time he saw
things there, beings hidden in foul niches of the void that grasped at him but
could not find purchase. He landed back on the bridge less than an hour and
more than an eternity after he had been dragged beneath. His jeans dripped with
frigid river-water beneath his emaciated, bleeding torso.

He stared into the water that reflected not the image of a
teenager but a lacerated, gaunt old man with bone-white hair and the barest
trace of youth in his face. Within his haunted, dark-rimmed eyes now lay the
forbidden secrets of the cosmos.

#

Susan tried to swim away as the pale, worm-like creature
encircled her body with its pink-tipped tentacles. She felt a sharp pain around
her ankle, and looked down through the murky water to see that the creature had
bitten down on her foot with one of its gnashing, circular mouths. Her lungs
began to ache, and she felt faint.

A figure floated in front of her, pulling at the massive
limb that clutched her body. She focused her eyes and saw David beating on the extremities
of the thing. As she looked closer, she saw that he had not escaped unscathed.
Half of his face looked as if it had been chewed on or burned, and one of his
eyes was milky. His good eye held more emotion than she had ever seen him
display.

He bent over in the water and sunk his teeth into the
tentacle, tearing off a strip of the rubbery, putrid flesh and releasing a
stream of ichor into the water. Then he inserted his hand into the appendage
and ripped the soft innards apart. The beast loosened its grip, and David grabbed
her arm and pulled her to the surface, away from the flailing thing.

He snagged a tree branch that extended over the embankment,
and pulled them both out of the water and onto dry land. Susan coughed up water
as David watched with his one good eye. Jason and Diane were nowhere to be seen.
Susan finished coughing and lay on her back trying to catch her breath. Her
foot still throbbed where the creature had bitten it, but it no longer burned.
The river calmed, and the creature lurking beneath the surface disappeared into
its depths.

“I’m sorry I got you and Diane into this mess,” David
averted his gaze as Susan looked up at him. “I didn’t know, but I think I
understand now.”

“Jason said you had a thing for me. Is that true?” There
were several questions she wanted to ask, but somehow that one leapt to the
front.

David remained silent for a few seconds. “I’m not all that
great with people. It’s why I never really talked to anyone at school, I was
too shy to make friends.” He paused. “I went to a couple of your plays, and I
thought it was cool how passionate you were about that stuff. I liked hearing
you sing, too.” The look in his eyes told her the rest.

“Is that why you chose our group when no one else picked
you to be in theirs?” David nodded, and Susan laughed bitterly. “I almost
didn’t join Diane’s group, but when she asked me I thought she wanted to work
things out.”

“She was someone special to you?” David asked.

“She was my best friend since childhood. She was the girl
that lived next door. But then we just…grew apart, I guess. It wasn’t her fault,
I wasn’t ready for things to change.” It struck her as ridiculous that this
conversation was even happening after what they had been through that night,
and she wondered for a brief moment if she were still unconscious.

The moon had risen, and it illuminated David in its glow.
Susan realized that his body didn’t cast a shadow.

“You’re-”

“It bit into my skull and drowned me in the river, but some
part of me managed to escape. For a little while, at least.” David looked away.

“But how did you…save me?” Susan asked in a hesitant voice.

“I think it might have to do with the bridge, it allows for
things that should not be to manifest here.” David paused. “It cost me a lot of
energy, though. My feelings…” Even in his current state Susan saw color rise to
his cheeks. “I think they gave me the strength.”

“Now that I’m dead, the bridge looks different. It’s not
really a bridge; it’s a portal and a horrid, gaping maw. I can hear its howl.”
David’s face took on an expression of loathing as he gazed at the structure.
“Leave this place, Susan. Go, and don’t return. Never speak of what you saw
tonight.”

“I won’t tell anyone else, but I can’t run away yet.
There’s something I have to do.” Susan turned as movement caught her eye, and
she saw the pale, translucent figure of Diane. They gazed at each other for
several seconds.

“I’m sorry, Suzy Q,” the other girl whispered, and Diane’s
old nickname brought a faint smile to her face. “I should have seen Jason’s
true self sooner.”

Susan felt hot tears rush down her face. “None of this was your
fault, Diane! I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Jason was right about
that, at least. I was being selfish and immature, and now you’re...”

Diane drifted over to Susan, her translucent form passing
through several trees. She enfolded the living girl in her arms, and they
stayed that way for several seconds. Her embrace felt like a gentle flurry of winter
snowflakes swirling around Susan’s body.

“I know what you’re planning,” she murmured in Susan’s ear.
“Do it,” she whispered, and then became smoke in the glare of the moon.

Susan turned back to David, who now looked less substantial.
“Thank you. For doing what you did, for fighting that thing. I’m sorry that I
blamed you for everything at first.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad that I could at least save you, but I
must go now. The harlequins of the Gatekeeper summon me to cavort in the bowels
of Ialu. I must join their cruel troupe, and Diane with me.”

“What…”

“There are some things that should not be described, and
the realms of Ialu are first among them. Forget all that you can, or else it
will haunt you until the end of your days.”

He glanced up at the sky with a look of despair on his face.
There seemed to be more stars out tonight than usual. “He will return soon, I
can see him through the gate. You survived, and his incantation failed.” David
met her gaze. “Goodbye, Susan Aisling. I wish I could have gotten to know you
better.”

“David…” He flashed her a nervous smile, and then faded
away. Susan let herself fall to the ground, where she rested but remained alert,
waiting with a thick tree branch in her hand. Every couple of minutes she lifted
her other hand to wipe a stray tear from her cheek.

A short time later she saw the waters of the river swell to
encompass the bridge. They receded after a moment, depositing a scrawny,
white-haired man onto its surface. With a shock she realized it was Jason. She
held her breath and staggered up behind him.

Before Jason could turn, Susan swung her makeshift club
into the back of his head, sending him sprawling onto the slick black surface
of the bridge. He looked up at her, surprise tainting his now ancient features.

He tried to stand, and she bashed him in the temple. She
leaned over Jason and straddled him, then dropped her weapon and wrapped her
fingers around his neck. She squeezed as hard as she could, and Jason’s eyes
bulged.

As she choked the life out of him he stared past her, up at
the sky. “Time, it…never ends…and never…began…” Jason coughed out, either
oblivious or indifferent to his encroaching death. Susan tightened her grip on
his throat.

A jolt passed through Jason’s body, and he snapped out of
his stupor. “No! I won’t! I won’t go back!” He began to grapple with renewed
fervor. Susan dug her thumbs into Jason’s throat. She crushed his Adam’s apple,
and a jet of crimson spurted from his mouth. As they continued their silent
struggle, Susan thought of Diane and David, lost forever beneath the muddy
waters of the river. She steeled herself and met Jason’s gaze as he gasped his
final breaths.

In his eyes she saw a field of misshapen masked figures
capering beneath a sky rampant with giant worm-like things, and beyond
them…Susan turned away as the visions assaulted her. She received only a
glimpse of what lurked above the pale worms, and even that hint sent a shudder
of revulsion to the core of her being.

For a moment she almost
felt sympathy for Jason. Beneath her, she felt the last bit of life drain from
his body. Susan waited a full minute, then released him and stood up. Her
injured foot ached from the pressure of standing, and she shifted her weight to
her other foot. She cast one more glance at the waters beneath the bridge, then
began the
long trek back to town.

Write a Review
Did you enjoy my story? Please let me know what you think by leaving a review! Thanks,
mm2537

Absolutely Rational:
The story is lovely, and the style of writing makes ot look like a stand alone. It's like a brand new book altogether and not a sequel. But somethings have a bit of cliche in them, like the rogues being evil and all. But overall, its a good book.

Ava Amerkashi:
I like it. The plot was so good. But still it had some problems as grammer that i give minus points. The ending was sad. I think the main male ruler, Travor, shouldnt die. Becuz i feel the story didnt fulfilled a good ending. But thats author idea :) Dear author, im looking for your next book. Go...

Jada N. Yancy:
Excellent plot and the wrong styles really puts me in a pirate like mental state which makes it awesome when reading! I like hos the author has made 3 chapters feel lIke 10 wIth lots of detaIls and character development. Please update soon 😄

Bidisha Archer Panja:
I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it I love it Template Writing A Book Easy A Book Report Outline is one of pictures that are related with the picture before in the collection gallery. The exactly dimension of Best solutions Of Best Photos Of Write A Book pixels. You can also ...

zitherus:
This was an awsome story. There needs to be more like this. The descriptions were awsome.My imagination was running wild. I did not want the story to end. It needs to continue now that she is able to be a Dom.

Jesse Mae:
Overall the story was great but there were some problems. There were some plot holes throughout that made it not flow like it could have and then grammar was also an issue. The story just needs to be edited and it would be alot better. I recommend this story to people and I hope the author edits....

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